Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Mitt Romney, vowing to expand the
Navy, said the U.S. has fewer warships now than in 1916. Back
then, a battleship’s main guns had a range of about 20,000
yards.

By comparison, jet fighters flying today off the Navy’s
Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers can reach targets
thousands of miles inland.

Romney’s pledge in a foreign-policy speech this week to
“restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions”
ignores technological advances that have increased the reach and
capabilities of U.S. sea power, according to Todd Harrison, a
defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments, a Washington-based policy research organization.

“Using ship count is an imprecise measure” of naval
power, Harrison said yesterday in an interview. “In 1916, how
many super-carriers and nuclear-powered attack submarines did we
have? While we do have a smaller number of ships, they are much
more capable. A single attack submarine can project power up to
1,000 miles away.”

Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, said in his
Oct. 8 speech at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington,
Virginia, that “the size of our Navy is at levels not seen
since 1916” and pledged to build “15 ships per year, including
three submarines.”

The Navy intends to buy 10 ships in 2013. Over 30 years,
the Navy’s ship purchases will average about 8.9 vessels per
year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Naval History

Nautical and technological advances aside, Romney also was
incorrect to assert that today’s fleet size is the smallest
since 1916, Harrison said.

The most recent low was in 2007, when the Navy had 278
ships compared with 285 today, according to the Navy’s History &
Heritage Command. At the end of 1916, the Navy had 245 ships,
according to the command.

The nation’s largest inventory was in 1944 when the Navy
had 6,084 ships, including 367 destroyers and 2,147 amphibious
ships, according to the command.

The biggest boost to ship production of the last century
came before the U.S. entered World War I in April 1917, when
President Woodrow Wilson persuaded Congress to pass the Naval
Act of 1916, according to “One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The
U.S. Navy, 1890-1990,” a 1993 book by George Baer. The
legislation let the Navy begin construction of 156 ships within
three years, according to the book.

Telegraph Messages

The battleships and destroyers of the U.S. Navy in 1916
operated in an era before radar and sonar, according to Navy
historian Timothy Francis.

“Radio communication was just being instituted, and ships
back then still used a lot of telegraph” to communicate once
they pulled into port, Francis said in a phone interview.

Crews on destroyers in the early 20th century could only
spot threats within sight because they lacked modern sensors
that can “see the entire ocean around them,” Francis said.

Destroyers from the early 1900s, whose role was to protect
battleships, had four 4-inch guns and two 1-pound anti-torpedo
guns with an effective range of a few thousand yards, Francis
said. Today’s Aegis-class destroyers carry Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles that can hit
targets thousands of miles away.

Romney’s defense adviser John Lehman told Defense News last
week that the candidate supports a fleet of 350 ships. Serving
as Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, Lehman backed a
plan to create a 600-ship Navy.

Virginia Vote

The push for a bigger Navy has political appeal in
Virginia, a closely contested state in the presidential
election. After his foreign policy speech, Romney spoke at a
rally in Newport News, Virginia, in an area that is home to the
largest U.S. Navy base and the headquarters of shipbuilder
Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.

Romney’s approach won backing from two naval analysts who
said the Navy is being asked to take on more missions, requiring
a larger fleet, even though modern ships and submarines have
greater reach and are more capable than their predecessors.

“Our interests now are more geographically dispersed and
our economic interests are deeper than in 1916 and the distances
to those interests have gotten no shorter,” said Bryan McGrath,
a retired Navy commander who’s now a consultant at Delex Systems
Inc. based in Vienna, Virginia. “The fleet we have today is not
sufficient to cover our interests.”

McGrath said he has provided advice to the Romney campaign,
although he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the candidate.

Mideast, Asia

The U.S. is likely to continue fighting terrorists in parts
of the Middle East and Africa while also rebalancing its forces
toward Asia, placing greater pressure on the Navy to provide a
maritime presence in both regions, said Norman Friedman, a New
York-based naval analyst and author.

“A ship, no matter how powerful, can only be at one place
at once,” Friedman said.

Romney’s goal of building 15 ships a year was probably
based on affordability, and the composition of ships in the
fleet would be determined by strategy, Friedman said.

While Romney has criticized Obama and called for reversing
cuts to U.S. defense spending, he hasn’t said how much his naval
plan would cost or how he would pay for it while also reducing
the federal deficit.

Defense Spending

Defense spending today remains more than double what it was
when President George W. Bush took office in 2001, adjusted for
inflation. A first round of cuts to the Pentagon budget -- $487
billion over 10 years -- was the product of an August 2011
bipartisan agreement between Congress and the Obama
administration.

An additional $500 billion in defense cuts will start in
January if Congress and the Obama administration fail to reach
an alternative deficit-reduction deal. White House officials and
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have said the second round in
reductions should be avoided.

Even if Romney were to find the money to boost
shipbuilding, he would have to spell out a strategy, Harrison
said.